


MANiCURE

by KirstieJ



Series: we're never getting older [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Eyeliner, Gen, Homophobic Language, Makeup, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 01:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8125942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KirstieJ/pseuds/KirstieJ
Summary: Salon’s enough for hernot to feel so insecurem-m-m-manicureshe wanna be take care'n of- MANiCURE, Lady GagaKent wants to try eyeliner, Jack agrees to help him. (The first in what will hopefully be a series of pimms centred fics inspired by song lyrics. This one doesn't include any real jackparse, tho)





	

It’s common for Jack to feel jealous of Kent. Jealous of how words roll off his tongue, and how he can cock his head to the side and grin his way out of awkward situations. He can talk to people without stammering, make shit up on the fly, and just get along in public without making a fool out of himself.

And even though _Kent_ can be absolutely smooth as he deals with the cashier picking up the eyeliner he threw on the counter along with a random assortment of things, Jack digs his nails into his wrist in some sort of second-hand social anxiety reaction. It doesn’t help that the cashier glances at them, two teenage boys, as she places the eyeliner in the bag.

He watches with awe and jealously as Kent perks up an eyebrow at the cashier, then smirks at her. “Little sister dropped hers in the yard coming home from a date. And it’s _my_ fault that the car ran it over when it was just sitting out there?”

“Of course,” the cashier quips. “Especially if you’re gonna replace it for her, right?” she says with a smile as she packs in their chips and a magazine. Kent hands her money and she gives back some change along with the bag

“Exactly,” Kent rolls his eyes. “Have a good one,” he says. He even winks at her, while she laughs and says “you too”. Jack just wordlessly follows Kent out of the store, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he gets into the passenger side of Kent’s mom’s car. He’s spending a long weekend at Kent’s for the first time, but they’ve been friends -best friends- for months now. It’s a long way to travel for a weekend, but Jack’s pretty used to travel and he’s going to have to stay used to travel for his desired line of work.

The radio is tuned into the Top 40s station, Kent’s favourite. Now that they’re friends, Jack chirps him frequently about the amount of pop songs on Kent’s beat up mp3, but Kent usually counters with “you listen to fucking country, dude” and they wind up in an endless loop of “your music is more stupid than my music” until one of them says fuck it and gives up.

The drive back to Kent’s apartment isn’t long, and it’s spent with Kent singing along loudly to the music. Jack may not love the music Kent listens to, but he has to admit Kenny sings very well when he wants to, and Jack would probably listen to him sing the shittiest pop song in the world if it meant Kent actually putting effort in and using his voice well. Right now, he’s only sort of trying, so it sounds nice but not amazing.

When they get there, Kent grabs the bag he had tossed in the backseat and reminds Jack to lock his door when he gets out. Kent makes sure to check the back doors before he takes his building key out of his pocket and lets them inside.

They’re home alone, because Kent’s little sister is staying the weekend with their cousins and Kent’s mother is at work. Their cat, Phoebe, is sprawling on Kent’s bed when they go into his room.

“Hey baby,” Kent coos at the cat, dumping the bag on his unmade bed next to her. He reaches and rubs at her stomach, which gets him clawed at in no time.

Kent looks over his shoulder at Jack, having moved his hand to pet the cat on the head. “You don’t have to just stand there in the doorway. Get the fuck in here,” Kent rolls his eyes. Jack takes his hand from the doorframe and walks into Kent’s room, sitting on his bed next to the stuff he just bought.

He picks up the gum and opens the package, taking out a piece to chew.

Kent looks over at him, still petting the cat. Then, he takes off his sweater and rolls his shoulders back, going over to the little radio-clock on his nightstand and turning on music. He goes back over to Jack and sits opposite of him, the contents on the bag still between them.

“What?” Jack says after Kent stares for roughly five seconds.

Kent just rolls his eyes again, as if Jack should have been able to read his mind. Or because Jack had just asked him ‘What’ without letting Kent even start to talk in the first place.

“Are we gonna fucking do this, or what?” Kent asks, pressing his brows upwards.

“Well, sure, if you wanna,” Jack says in one of the most noncommittal ways he possibly could. Kent rolls his eyes again.

“Duh. We already went so far as to buy it, for fucks sake. Might as well try it out,” Kent says, gruff. Jack thinks, maybe, Kent is nervous to do this as well as. Maybe that’s why he sounds so pushy. Not that he doesn’t get pushy anyway, but that’s normally when there’s a game against a team with a tough reputation.

“Okay,” Jack says simply. Kent picks up the little black pencil and hands it to him. “I’m going to remind you that I really have never done this before. I did see my mom do it over the holidays, but it’s been a while since I used to watch her get her makeup done all the time.”

“Whatever, man. Just try not to poke my entire eye out?” Kent says, and Jack just grimaces.

When they’d been drunk a couple weekends ago this had sounded like a much better idea than it does now. They’d been in their shared room; the party they’d been at was over. Kent was talking about his second favourite genre of music, emo or pop punk or something. It frequently mixed in with mainstream pop music anyway. Somehow he got on the topic of Pete Wentz, and how it was sort of stupid makeup was ‘for girls’. But, all celebrities totally wear makeup, right? Including the dudes. So, again, it was stupid how it was only acceptable for girls to wear makeup in normal life. And, assholes often did call out famous guys for wearing eyeliner, even though they probably wear other makeup too, like all other fucking celebrities, so what was the huge difference? Kent had heard some girls thought guys in eyeliner were sexy. Then, Kent had asked, wouldn’t it be fucked up for him to wear eyeliner? He said he thought he’d look hot in it, though. Jack had silently agreed, and then he verbally agreed to their half-baked plan to steal eyeliner or buy it or something just to see what Kent would look like with it on. He also agreed to be the one to put it on, Kent having no idea how the application of makeup worded. Jack had an inkling of a clue.

Jack’s mother was a model, after all.  She was famous, and he’d spent many afternoons in his childhood watching his mother get her hair and makeup done for various occasions. Both her makeup artist and hairstylist were men, which Jack had, at first, found strange.

Of course, he only found it strange because he could still remember, the time when he was about six years old, when he’d been sitting on the arm of the chair playing with his mother’s hair absently. He was a shy child and he didn’t want to play with all the other little children, not after spending the whole day with his older cousins.

He thought nothing of it as he was doing it, but soon his father wandered over with a little gaggle of friends. His dad stopped on the way to talk to one of his hockey uncles, but four other adults continued on their way. Jack did his best not to tug much harder on his mother’s hair when they drew near enough to talk to him.

“Awh, you like playing with hair, huh?” one of the women cooed and Jack pursed his lips, looking at his mother with an uneasy gaze.

“Maybe we have a future hairdresser here,” another woman said with a light laugh. She said it with no malice, at least none that Jack could remember. It was the first woman’s husband who snorted and shook his head.

“Pat, come on. No son of Bad Bob is going to be a pansy ass hairdresser.”

The woman stiffened a bit. “He could be whatever he wants, Joey. Maybe he’ll end up taking after his mother instead of his father. You just don’t know those types of things”

The man laughed at her, “Oh, as if. I think we know exactly who he takes after, here. You ever see this kid on skates? He’s practically a wunderkind already and he’s only six.” He leaned over and pat Jack on the shoulder, who avoided his gaze. When the man laughed and stood up straight again, Jack leaned into his mother.

“Mom,” Jack whispered and she pat his head, pulling him onto her lap.

“He’s a little tired,” she had said to the people standing around her. “I think we’re gonna duck inside to get some water and see if he wants to lie down. It’s not too far from bedtime, anyway.”  
At least Jack thinks that’s how he escaped their conversation. 

Presently, Jack’s not sure if those are the exact details of the situation, but he remembers the phrase “pansy ass hairdresser” as clear as day. So, just three years later, when he met his mother’s hairstylist he’d been surprised to see he was a man.

But he was very nice. So was his mother’s makeup artist, honestly. They were funny and they didn’t know too much about hockey, so they didn’t ask him the same questions everybody else did about his practices, his skills, his games, and so on.

Instead, they told him jokes and gave him little candies they always had in one of their bags. They told him a little bit about what they did, the names of the tools they used and things like that. His mother seemed thrilled that Jack was even remotely interested in it.

Jack had just liked them. He didn’t know exactly why. They both just seemed so calm and happy and chatty, things Jack always sort of wished he was, or maybe that was just how he saw things when he looked back on them. It was hard to tell. Either way, he liked them.

It wasn’t until he hit his teenage years he figured out another reason he may have taken a liking to these two men that were just so much _different_ than all the other men in his life. He stopped sitting in on his mother’s hair and makeup appointments, then, and was ashamed of himself at the reason why. There was nothing wrong with those two men, or the love they shared, and Jack knew that. But too many of the boys he surrounded himself with would never understand it.

Either way, in the present, Jack is still the one with more “experience” with makeup, so he agreed to that part of their plan, too.

And, really, it’s not like the plan was all that bad. It shouldn’t even be a big deal, and it’s currently frustrating that it _feels_ like such a big deal (though neither of them know how insecure the other is). They’re in private, they trust each other, they both agreed to it. Why does it feel like they still can’t cross this line together?

“Okay,” Jack says, and he licks his lips. He opens up the packaging on the eyeliner and twists it up. They got that kind so they wouldn’t have to use a sharpener, though Jack had never seen his mother use a twist-up one before. “C’mere,” Jack says, gesturing forward. Kent moves forward a bit and juts out his chin, which Jack takes in his other hand.

“Uuhh,” Jack says. “Look up, maybe?”

“Kay,” Kent says, causal. He looks up and hums along to whatever stupid pop is playing now.

Jack bites his tongue gently in concentration, carefully drawing a little line under Kent’s left eye, doing his very best not to stab him too much. Kent does wince and try to jerk back a bit but Jack’s hand keeps him in place, mostly.

“Zimms!”

“Sorry,” Jack scoffs at him. He’s even more careful after that, and he manages a thin line without too much damage or wobbliness.

Jack breathes hard out of his nose as he pushes Kent’s head a little to the other side, doing the other eye. It’s not bad, but it comes out a little thicker, so he goes back to the first one to try and make them match. He pokes Kent a little again and Kent groans loudly at him.

“There. Fucking done,” Jack says, eyes wide with exasperation.

“Thanks!” Kent chirps. “How the fuck does it look?”

“Hot,” Jack says, face completely even. He’s not even lying, but he expects the shove he gets to the shoulder.

“Fuck off. Do I look like a total fag?” Kent asks, standing up to look in the mirror.

“Kinda,” Jack says with a shrug. “It doesn’t actually look that bad.”

Kent breathes in and out through his nose. The truth is, he does sort of look gay with it on (or, the stereotype of an emo gay boy one might find on the internet, maybe?) but he thinks he does look kinda hot. He pulls it off. He’s glad about that. Maybe he shouldn’t be.

“Well, at least I know if hockey doesn’t work out I can be in a band,” Kent says, and Jack smirks at him, giving a noise of amusement.

“Want me to put it on you?” Kent asks, picking up the stick.

“Hell no. One, you don’t share products you put on the eye, that’s disgusting. Two, I really doubt it would look anything but atrocious.”

Kent snorts, “Kay, whatever. I bet you’d look hot.”

“I’d look like a fag,” Jack points out and Kent just shrugs at him.

“I mean, there was a reason we’re doing this alone. And taking the fact that we’ve done to the grave after today,” he says. “You can be faggy with me,” Kent ends with a smirk, wiggling his brows.

“To refer to point one, I’m not getting some sort of eye infection from you.”

“Fine,” Kent says, airy. He looks back in the mirror again, and wonders if he’ll ever have another reason to wear eyeliner again in his life. He sort of hopes he can come up with one.

“Wanna find my little sister’s lipstick to put on?” Kent says with a fiendish grin. “I know you’re willing to share chapstick, fuckbag, so don’t give me any bs about lip germs.”

“No, Kenny,” Jack says. “I’m not putting on makeup. I… I mean, it seems like it’s kind of fun to put on other people, but I don’t want it on myself.”

“Fair,” Kent says with a shrug. “That was more of a chirp than it was an honest suggestion. Wanna play Mario?” he looks over to the little box TV sitting on his dresser, a shirt hanging over it.

“Sure,” Jack says. “You gonna take that shit off your face?”

“I’ll probably leave it on for a little while,” Kent says with a little shrug.

“Kay,” Jack responds, taking the game controller that he’s being handed. He holds Kent’s gaze for a beat, trying not to think of how Kent looks attractive with the makeup and how it’s stereotypically ‘gay’ to wear it.


End file.
